


black, white, purple

by slire



Series: And I must borrow every changing shape [2]
Category: Mushishi
Genre: Gen, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Sickness, conceptualized souls, implied PTSD, post-s02, rot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 05:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10298384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slire/pseuds/slire
Summary: Kumado begrudgingly heals Ginko from an infected knife-wound. Adashino is called upon and proceeds to insult the shit out of the head of the Minai-clan.





	

The Minai-clan is often belittled for their limited knowledge on other mushi than world-ending ones. Three generations back, a well-respected head of the family had died from a minor mushi-infection. The cure was to eat a lotus-flower. The property on which the man had slowly died had been surrounded by lotus trees. When his father told him this story, bitter with age-old humiliation, Kumado Minai said, _"Pathethic."_ And when his father tried to slap him like a child, Kumado broke his father's fingers within his hand.

That was his first act as head of the clan. 

The second was, and is, research.

A favorite (or preferred; Kumado does not have favorites, wants, loves) species of his is an unnamed mushi that deals in rot. Like the infections that attack a human's body, heat is made in decomposition. The mushi lies eggs both in mounds of forest deadfall, and in diseased humans. Incidents of the latter is harder to come by, as doctors are sent for, not mushishi. Kumado's research shows the mushi uses pus—the phlegm excluded by infected wounds—in some strange symbiosis, digging up fresh blood to faster heal the wound after egg-laying; encapsulating the eggs in hot rot. After a time, the eggs hatch, break out of their host and fly out in the shape of silver butterflies. Almost always, the host survives. Kumado keeps a dozen around in small round glass bulbs in his wooden backpack. Main reason he keeps them is research, second out of usefulness: in case of infection. On his journeys his body—his vessel—has suffered numerous wounds; cuts, scrapes, bruises, etc. Sometimes infection settles in the wounds. When he uses the unnamed mushi and the unnamed mushi do burst forth from his healed wounds as he rises, he feels nostalgic.

Hearing them. All of them.

Feeling them looking at him.

( _"Illusions," h_ is grandfather had said. _"Your fears, manifested."_ )

In the mine, on the futon, Ginko seems to be writhing and glowing against the dark of the rock-gravel ground and cave-walls around him.

An illusion, of course. Ginko is very still.

Inside himself, Kumado feels the echo of something Ancient: a deep, reverberating sound.

The unnamed mushi, four of its sort, work on the deep cut in Ginko's belly. It's ill-smelling and oozes an opaque substance, and when he first lifted his glass-bulbs up the mushi inside vibrated in lust. Idly, Komado wonders if it could be compared to human desire. They swarm Ginko lovingly, shining silver, just like they breathen will be when hatching.

When Kumado found Ginko he'd considered leaving him there. Lightning had lit up the clearing (with the white, unconscious body in its middle; unnatural) and Komado had counted three until thunder. The season for extremes. And those who lingers at the edge of humanity shall feel is also. However, the Fourth Scribe of the Karibusa-clan, whom Komado was born to serve, held affection for the white-haired mushishi who'd (also in the words of his grandfather) "strayed from the path". Ginko was the reason the Scribe had begun smoking. He was also the reason for softness in her eyes where there should've been bitterness. Kumado did not have any real affection for the Scribe but he had his duties. So he had brought Ginko to a safer, dryer place. His hands were full of glass shards and his stomach cut (where it originated from was unknown) badly infected, with a ring around it. Kumado removed the shards with clippers, and the unnamed mushi did its job.

So why this sudden need to kill him? Kumado' hatred is strong, hot and not always helpful. There is a secret: the first thing Kumado had done was remove Ginko's eye, knowing it to be false. He'd thrown it out. It'd left a hole and felt good.

Kumado closes his own eyes, meditates. Anything to be nameless: to be unmade, again.

A voice calls him out of it. "…Yy…ouu."

"Me," Kumado says flatly. He sits near the entrance of the abandoned mine, with a fire burning. Over it a small pot boils water. Behind Kumado, the rainfall looks like an opaque wall. The smell of smoke burns out the smell of dust.

"Ugh," Ginko's head, temporarily risen like a dying man's last move, falls back on the futon. Kumado thinks of a puppet on a string, then of his own body. He pours the boiled water into a cup filled with rose-leaves and dried vegetables.

Flowers, had he loved flowers?

Food, had he loved food?

He brings the cup to Ginko. "Fuel your body. I need to ensure your survival before I leave."

"Most people… call it eating…"

Snark, even now. Ginko spills on himself. "Let me," Kumado says, and holds a hand under Ginko's head, tipping him up, holding the cup to his lips. It's very intimate. Infantile.

An unbidden thought: he'll have to pregnate women soon in order to produce an heir in his clan.

Annoying.

"Thank you," Ginko says quietly.

"The Scribe would prefer you alive," Kumado says.

"What constitutes… being alive?" Ginko's body, splayed. The green of his eye, the pink of his lips, the silver of his wound. One hand lays stretched on the ground above his head. With his white skin he looks like a statue, or a ghost.

"To have a soul," Kumado answers as if reading from a textbook. He steps away to resume his place by the fire.

"What about… a half-soul?" Ginko asks.

Kumado doesn't catch the question first, stops. Then he does and for a moment the world unravels. Rage. Hatred. (Fear). The basic elements of his being, the maker of his frown. Soulless. To be replaced time and time again. A half-soul, of sorts, needed but feared. When Kumado is tired he indulges rage. He entertains great fantasies of burning and slashing, but of darkness, mostly. To trap, to watch the object of rage be consumed.

When Kumado comes to himself, Ginko is holding the hand above him in the air, watching it curl and uncurl. His eye betrays a fever-glaze. "There is something wrong with me."

"You chose the wrong path."

"Yes." But they are not on the same path; Ginko's is shrouded in some dream, maybe a memory. "I… I touched her. It. The shadow of her. She warned me off something. Ginko. Who is Ginko? What is—" The mushi on his stomach seem to writhe even more. He brings his hand to his empty eye-socket, squeezes. "The ground is opening up beneath me. I do not remember. Or?" A tunnel in his head, where does it lead? "It said something that awakened a memory and I was afraid and destroyed it. I regretted it and wanted answers. I went back—and there were thunder!—and tried to gather it up again, but it laid smashed." People are seldom conscious while the nameless mushi work them. They penetrate deeper than skin. The researcher part of Kumado wants to see it's process. The more human part, if that is what it is, says he needs an hour of reflection before committing to such a project. Previous experiences tell him to be careful with humans. (Most recently: a husband, having lost his partner to an odd mushi described as an "embodied nothing". But Kumado found the partner's diary, and the so-called mushi turned out to be a hidden suicide-idealization. A waste of time, of tears from the partner). When searching deeply he mostly finds waste. But… But.

(A memory, a strange curiosity: Kumado too had asked who Ginko was. Tanyuu had answered, _"He does not remember."_ )

"What did the _it_ say?"

"That I was mushi."

Too deep.

"Sleep," Kumado shakily orders, then his voice grows stronger: "Sleep."

Ginko's tiny-pupilled eye remains fixed at Kumado for an intense moment. Somehow it feels like his black-hole eye socket stares deeper. Then it closes.

Kumado lets out the breath he didn't know he was holding. He watches him in silence for a while, then abruptly stands and leaves. By then the rainfall is a drizzle. A dark wind blows.

There is a village nearby, on the downward slope of the mountainous region.

Brown huts with tattered quilts as entrances. Wet, they hang slack. Dead ghosts. The villagers themselves have grey faces and grey fingers, jaws set tight. The smell of dust. Occasional sound of a tamed animal. The village's main resource is coal; the mines stretch deep into the mountain. They're a superstitious lot and hang out bags of dried vegetables to ward off evil spirits / mushi.

During night, Kumado cuts them down, mixes them with rainwater and makes soup. He eats mechanically and places the rest beside Ginko's futon. In the cave: the clogging smell of food. Much better than dust and smoke, most would think. Kumado doesn't think anything at all. Nobody sees him. It's better that way, for an eternal sleep-walker. 

During day, he walks straight to the village elder's hut and commands for there to be sent word out for the neighbouring fish village's doctor. This one's doctor died in a mudslide last spring. Kumado need only say his family-name for the order to be heeded and the messenger to _run_. _But do not tell he or she my name_ , he'd said, wanting a doctor, not a mushishi.

At his journey back up to the abandoned mine, he encounters a lone lotus tree. It's in full-bloom despite itself, pink and beautiful. Kumado sees it and feels the wind blow through the soul he does not have. Any blossoms that fall on his clothing is immediately wiped away. He dwells on the moment in which Ginko repeated his own name like it was meant to summon a monster.

How many times has he died? His soul extinguished time and time again. Kumado's knockles move underneath the skin, foetus-like. ( _"If you're going to hate something, hate them."_ ) Hate. Hate. Hate. It's etched into his face, his standard expression a scowl, body a patchwork of bruises and scars. From the higher ground, he sees the people mingle, unaware, floating by day to day not knowing that the Minai strived ceaslessly for their continued existence. If the Forbidden Mushi re-emerges all of their small joys would turn to shit in their mouths. They are no more or less to him than the maggots that dwindle in the mud. Too often people will not see what is right in front of them. 

Late summer brings madness into the air. Fights break out in the sudden cooling, the tumble from hot summer night to wet autumn dawn. Aggressive, aggressive, Kumado keeps his gaze on the ground to not meet a stranger's. He hopes Ginko is asleep.

The mine, the dark space, does not unnerve him—it is the _thinking_ creature inside that does. It's gone dark alright, and his only companion upon entry is the dark wind. Kumado lights a lantern and puts it on the end of a long stick, holding it upwards: perhaps Ginko has been swallowed by the darkness.

Hope failed him. The bitch.

Ginko is awake. The by-now cold vegetable soup rests in his hands. He is staring into it like a dying man until he spots Kumado. Under the light, his face cracks, then becomes a mask: an unnatural smile. "Hello again. Thank you—again," he says, as if nothing's happened.

In his bare upper body, showing off alabaster skin, there lies 20-30 small invisible eggs. Kumado seeks strange comfort in the thought. He waits. He will not entertain pretending.

"…Hello? Have you been eaten by a Sanekui again?" Ginko asks in that blunt way of his.

"I have questions."

It is Ginko's turn to wait. In his dirtied robes, with his dusty face and hair and sickly complexion, he'd look almost normal. Except the eyes, of course. Or eye. One green one hole.

"Your hands. They were full of glass. Why?" The tone falls somewhere between an order and a professorial demand.

Ginko blinks. He struggles to recall: a hand is raised to his forehead (Kumado recognizes the gesture and writes it down as a nervous tick: commits it to memory), then falls.

"Where did you receive the knife wound?"

"A mother stabbed me because of a Watahaki-mushi." Kumado recognizes the species immediately. In cases involving it, the Minai-procedure is to burn the whole house down. Sometimes the parent choose to burn with the mushi. It's hard to tell the screaming apart. "I kept the Hitotake in a glass jar, for a little while. Then I destroyed it. I smashed it with a rock. Not my hands. So I don't know how I had glass in my hands."

Odd things happen under the influence of a wound. Odd things happen during thunderstorms, too. And in the merging of seasons. Kumado has no trouble imagining a delirious Ginko smashing the glass jar in a fit of rage brought about by these omens, only to return and cut himself on glass trying to rebuild the Hitotake-mushi.

"Did it claim you were mushi?"

"Yes. How did you…?"

"Lucky guess," Kumado lies. "And is it true?"

"No," Ginko cuts him off harshly, too harshly, abusing his dusty throat till he coughs. "N—no, that's impossible. One can't be human and mushi at the same time."

Kumado gestures to himself.

"I'm not a half-soul like you," Ginko says.

He tells himself it's simply the scientist-part of himself that makes his voice go cool and vindictive when he says, "Maybe not. But you might be what we've been looking for."

The Minai-clan, finally come to an end. No purpose anymore. No need to walk the Earth till his feet and hands burn with blisters in search for an eternal _nothing_. So he can finally sleep. Kumado closes his eyes, briefly, in bliss. To sleep. To—

He opens them.

In his backpack resides some rope meant for human hands. A secret: when Minai burn the infested houses, sometimes they burn the families too. Holding the rope, he advances towards Ginko.

Ginko sits still. Too still. "I was tied down once," he says coldly. "No one survived that."

"So you admit your," a mushi's, "violent nature?"

"Violent only when not understood," Ginko corrects as easily as wind. His legs are curled in a lotus-position (Kumado forcefully represses the instinctive madness that rises up at the word and blames the weather) but his facial expression lacks the serenity of a monk's. "You strike me as far more unstable, Kumado." Kumado openly scorns the use of the first name—where did he get the _right_? "You are not the first to test theories on me. But this time I will not trust you to have my well-being, nor the well-being of others, in mind." There must've been more people who saw Ginko for what he was.

_Stand up._

Kumado takes a step forward. That does it.

Ginko stands up—too early for the eggs inside him. Immediately his hands move instinctively towards his stomach, bending over, trembling all over. Cold sweat breaks out. In other cases Kumado would've instructed the patient to lay down again and hope for the best. The process is similar to childbirth: relax and lie still. Do not panic. If a pregnant woman stood and shook like Ginko, would it affect the child? Hadn't human moral dictated otherwise, maybe Kumado would've tested it on his future child-bearer. He advances to further agitate Ginko and to see the nameless mushi

**burst!**

out and fly upwards in a shape much like butterflies, only to clatter to the ground like silver coins—unfinished and thus unmade. Dead. Ginko opens his mouth and lets out a silent scream, thin grey liquid running down the sides of his mouth. He drops to his knees, falls forward face-first, and Kumado catches it so he won't crack his (scientifically invaluable) skull on the ground. Again: intimate. Human contact. Human emotion. Confusing, double-sided. Kumado lets go gently-harsh, and ties the arms in a knot behind Ginko's back.

This is what he must do: find a cure for the Forbidden Mushi by any means possible.

Kumado feels his no-soul flutter in his chest. What is it like to dream?

And in the mine in which two men struggle a third one enters.

"What are you doing."

Sometimes startled but he is never surprised, Kumado turns around, eyes as flat as the voice of the man in the entrance. The man is ordinary except his glasses (scholarly, well-off), sun-kissed skin (of a warmer region) and his cleanliness (access to clean water). The doctor, then. No other would enter willingly. But again, this is a strange time.

"Are you the doctor I sent for?"

The man pauses. Finally, he says, "Yes."

"You came in vain," Kumado says, allowing authority to ooze off him, "I fixed the problem."

The man looks towards Ginko, who lies limp and facedown.

In his eyes: Love, and all that follows. First and foremost: hatred towards those who hurt the loved. (The doctor knows Ginko. His expression is the same as on the people who ran into the house where the Watahaki-mushi screamed for mommy and daddy). "The problem seems to be here still." He looks towards Kumado. Something visibly twists within him and he strides forward.

Kumado feels his chest tighten when he remembers what humans who love can do.

It must be the season.

He is not afraid of death. He's been dying regularly for years. 

"This is a mushishi-matter. It does not concern your kin." 

"My kin? Humanity?" 

"Non-mushishi." 

The man slaps him. It is not quite a punch; it's flat-handed, disciplinary, one used for children rather than men. Kumado staggers—if it's at the force of it or the actual shock, he does not know.  "I have never seen mushi, no, but I suspect that even with their basic life-form they'd be more polite than you. Step aside."

"Why." 

Inside the doctor: a peculiar earthquake. His thoughts run like water, reflecting in and out through his eyes in equal proportion. 

"This town is… a superstitious lot, yes. The reason I got here so quickly is because the people know you're here, and guided me up. As of now they're outside. They know you'd been tearing down their sacrificial offerings. Tch. Should I, the only doctor around considering the last one's untimely demise, get hurt, they'd want blood. This is not your land, Kumado Minai. We do not fear you here."

"How do you know my name?"

The doctor smirks. "Why your father was one of my curators. Maybe if you'd spent less time researching you'd know this. My name is Adashino. Because I am a doctor, I care about people. Including the bastard," he points at Ginko, "over there."

"What do you mean my father was one of your… curators?" The word is unfamiliar on Kumado's tongue. Art and history and culture only put you in chains of your own free will. 

"When you were a child, I wasn't old either. But I travelled to your father to learn where the line between a medical doctor and a mushishi's work went. And you where there. Young and wide-eyed."

An old question: "Did I… Did I enjoy food?" 

"You ate with a ferocity I've seldom seen in a child," Adashino says.

That is why his grandfather served him so much good food. An apology. Pathetic. In the end, he did not eat the food—he ate himself. Hair and flesh and bone and all. In the dark, he'd longed for the end. Finally, finally he'd become a monster. 

(Finally he'd become mushi.)

Adashino leaves him standing there contemplating his own existence. Adashino walks past him to the man he thinks is his friend. Sinks to his knees. Shakes the human body that is not human. "It's alright," Adashino says, awkward-soft. But his expression is heavy with knowledge. 

Ginko—

Moves. 

Kumado instinctively watches with one eye open, one eye closed. 

Ginko looks up at Adashino like one would through a stream of water. He's drowning, confused. Adashino notes the lack of eye but does not comment.

"Wake up," Adashino says. 

He sees Ginko's pupil widen and go into focus after twitching a little. He stares at Adashino, then in front of him. With a blasé voice, he says, "There is something I have to do."

He rises in silence. 

Something rustles as he leaves the abandoned mine. 

Adashino swallows and feels a deep, deep pressure inside. His hand had risen by its own accord in a try to grab Ginko and hold him back—but it tingled and Adashino felt the usual crawl of being close to powerful mushi, even if he'd never seen one. What's happened to Ginko? It's a lot to take in. Suddenly Ginko was there, suddenly he was not. All that's left is the lack of dust where his body laid splayed, and a bunch of silver bugs.

"...We have a problem."

"We," Kumado echoes. 

"Yes. We ought to contact your boss and ask her what she knows." Adashino puts a finger under his chin, contemplative. "I'd stop Ginko if I didn't know how stubborn he is once he's made his mind up, the _bastard_. The smartest thing we can do is to research what."

"You don't know the way."

"Nope. So I'm expecting you to take me to her."

The doctor will be easy to shake off. He cannot pass the people outside (if there are people outside) unless the doctor accompanies him.

Kumado will not tell the Scribe about the nameless mushi. He will collect shells to entertain her whims and he will drink her tea without complaint but he will not tell her about his private little projects. 

"There is something I have to do," Kumado mutters, more to himself than to Adashino, "even if I don't know what yet."

**Author's Note:**

> hm. i wondered if i should've made this work more stand-alone (mostly ruined by ginko's strange behavior), but it wouldn't work as a series then. next installment will have three chapters tho.
> 
> spoiler warning: kumado doesn't manage to shake off adashino


End file.
